We respond to a Letter to the Editor regarding "Principlism and contemporary ethical considerations for providers of transgender health care." We address criticisms by Castle & Klein (2024) of blatant fatphobia related to the ethical elements concerning BMI restrictions for gender-affirming surgery. Our response corrects several mischaracterizations of the article and clarifies our position. My co-authors and I remain focused on advocating for patient-centered, ethically sound, evidence-based, and equitable healthcare policies.

Background: Transgender health care is a subject of much debate among clinicians, political commentators, and policy-makers. While the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care (SOC) establish clinical standards, these standards contain implied ethics but lack explicit focused discussion of ethical considerations in providing care. An ethics chapter in the SOC would enhance clinical guidelines. Aims: We aim to provide a valuable guide for healthcare professionals, and anyone interested in the ethical aspects of clinical support for gender (...) diverse and transgender people of all ages. Recognizing that the WPATH is a global association, we address broad challenges. We offer a reflection on general ethical principles, providing conceptual tools for healthcare providers, patients, and families to navigate the specific challenges they might encounter in transgender health care, in line with WPATH’s worldwide mission and scope. Method: This article employs a descriptive analysis, and our framework of reference is the four principles of biomedical ethics: respect for autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. Results: The article presents a discussion on the four ethical principles as applied to transgender health care. We address issues such as respect for patient autonomy in decision-making, the role of beneficence and nonmaleficence in clinical interventions, and the importance of justice in equitable treatment and access to care. Some of the ethical concerns we address in this article pertain to the current sociopolitical climate, where there has been increasing legal interference, internationally, for transgender and nonbinary people, particularly youth, seeking medical care. Discussion: We highlight the interplay between ethical principles and clinical practice, underscoring the need for ethical guidance in addressing the diverse challenges faced by healthcare providers and patients in transgender health care. We advocate for continuous refinement of ethical thinking to ensure that transgender health care is not only medically effective but also ethically sound. (shrink)

Body as a radical reality in human activity is a common thesis in the phenomenological thought, from its origin in the work of Edmund Husserl, in those of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel Henry, to post-phenomenological currents, including Don Ihde and the American school. As a complementary thesis, they highlight the presence of the body in technologies: its deep interaction and integration, generating a certain bodily extension that makes the user-device an environment of intentional feedback through which flows the matter (...) of the experienced. Through the synthesis of previous techniques, digital media have deepened this capacity for integration: through embodiment and representation, hardware and software, multiple forms of bodily extension are experimentable. From the construction of these alternative corporealities emerges the narrative of a digital body as a 'real body', controlled by us, fully equivalent and similar to our own bodies. In this text we propose a brief analysis of digital corporeality based on phenomenological reflections, especially those around tactile self-perception, as a foundation for a criterion of bodily identity applicable to these technologies and which reclaims the original and carnal experience of the user. (shrink)

The paper defends a version of Direct Reference for indexicals on which reference-fixing material (token-reflexive conditions) plays the role of an ancillary presupposition.

The truth of a statement depends on the world in two ways: what the statement says is true if the world is as the statement says it is; on the other hand, what the expressions in the statement mean depends on what the world is like (for instance, on what conventions are in place). Each of these two kinds of dependence of truth on the world corresponds to one of the dimensions on the two-dimensional semantic framework, developed in the 1970’ (...) in the work of Evans, Kaplan, Kripke and Stalnaker. The introduction provides a systematic overview of the framework, the ideas of its earlier originators, recent developments and criticism. Finally, it gives a brief overview over the contributions to the volume. (shrink)

There are propositions constituting the content of fictions—sometimes of the utmost importance to understand them—which are not explicitly presented, but must somehow be inferred. This essay deals with what these inferences tell us about the nature of fiction. I will criticize three well-known proposals in the literature: those by David Lewis, Gregory Currie, and Kendall Walton. I advocate a proposal of my own, which I will claim improves on theirs. Most important for my purposes, I will argue on this basis, (...) against Walton’s objections, for an illocutionary-act account of fiction, inspired in part by some of Lewis’s and Currie’s suggestions, but (perhaps paradoxically) above all by Walton’s deservedly influential views. (shrink)

I argue racial injustice undermines the reliability of news source reports in the information domain of racial injustice. I argue that this in turn undermines subjects’ doxastic justification in inferences they base on these news sources in the racial injustice information domain. I explain that racial injustice does this undermining through the effect of racial prejudice on news organizations’ members and the effect of society's racially unjust structure on non-dominant racial group-controlled news sources.

I present a novel position vis-à-vis the views in the Latin American philosophy literature regarding whether subjects more aptly use "Hispanic" or "Latinx" to refer to Hispanic- or-Latinx people. To this end, I will argue (C) the term "Afro-Latinx" is more apt than "Hispanic" or "Latinx" in a significant number of cases. This conclusion is based on three premises. The first premise (P1) is that use of "Afro-Latinx" provides subjects with understanding of how certain events depend on anti-Black racism, US (...) society's racially unjust structure and US colonial policy. The second premise (P2) is that that neither the term "Hispanic" nor the term "Latinx" provide subjects with this understanding of how certain events depend on anti-Black racism, US society's racially unjust structure and US colonial policy. The third premise (P3) is that the term "Afro-Latinx" provides subjects with more understanding of these events than the terms, "Hispanic" and "Latinx.” I present three cases which feature the experiences of Afro-Dominican people. The 1992 murder of Dominican man Kiko García by New York Police officer O’Keefe is first case. The second case is the Washington Heights Uprising that ensued Kiko García’ murder. An instance where a nightclub bouncer in the Dominican Republic denies a Dominican women entry because of her hair texture composes the third case. (shrink)

From the thought of mid-twentieth century Mexican philosopher Jorge Portilla (1919-1964), I develop a three-prong existentialist response to the problem of evil. One prong is granting that a version of the problem of evil is successful: no theodicy is credible while beholding innocent suffering. A second prong involves an affective engagement with evil that facilitates a loving human flourishing grounded in solidarity with sufferers, compassion, loving self-sacrifice, and taking responsibility for one’s own culpability. The final prong is the capacity of (...) this affective engagement with evil to permit a belief in God as an existential commitment to a suffering God as a transcendental ideal of self-sacrificing love that guides one’s perpetual project of self-creation. (shrink)

I defend a Deferred Ostension view of quotation, on which quotation-marks are the linguistic bearers of reference, functioning like a demonstrative; the quoted material merely plays the role of a demonstratum. On this view, the quoted material works like Nunberg’s indexes in his account of deferred ostensión in general. The referent is obtained through some contextually suggested relation; in the default case the relation will be … instantiates the linguistic type __, but there are other possibilities. In this way, the (...) deferred ostension view deals with a problem I pointed out for the identity proposal in my earlier work, that we do not merely refer with quotations to expression-types, but also to other entities related in some way to the relevant token we use: features exhibited by the token distinct from those constituting its linguistic type, features exhibited by other tokens of the same type but not by the one actually used (as when, by using a graphic token, we refer to its phonetic type), or even other related tokens (see the examples on p. 261 of García-Carpintero 1994). (shrink)

In Charles Mills’ essay, “White Ignorance,” and his trail-blazing monograph, The Racial Contract, he developed a view of how Whiteness or anti-Black-Indigenous-and-Latinx racism causes individuals to hold false beliefs or lack beliefs about racial injustice in particular and the world in general. I will defend a novel exegetical claim that Mills’ view is part of a more general view regarding how racial injustice can affect a subject’s epistemic standing such as whether they are justified in a belief and whether their (...) degree of confidence in the belief is rational given their evidence. Then, in light of this novel exegetical claim, I show how this interpretation of Mills’ view that racial injustice causes ignorance relates to how epistemically justified philosophers and social scientists are in the views that dominate their respective scholarly literature. (shrink)

I argue that Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda differed in their conclusions regarding the status of Indigenous persons at least partly because las Casas had significant, yet incomplete, understanding of Indigenous persons, culture and societies and Sepúlveda had mere knowledge of them. To this end, I show that the epistemic state of understanding explains why Las Casas properly concluded that Indigenous persons deserve the same moral status afforded to Europeans. And I show how las Casas’ understanding (...) of Indigenous persons, culture and societies related to what he got wrong about Indigenous persons. (shrink)

We will explain why the Treatise on Basic Philosophy is a metascientific work and not a philosophical one. We will then argue that this meta-science is part of a long process of naturalization of thought that begins at the end of the Middle Ages to give birth to the scientific thought of the study of the world. For Bunge, naturalization takes the form of the naturalization of the general thought which makes it possible to replace philosophical general discourse with scientific (...) gen-eral discourse. Finally, this naturalization of general discourse should not be con-fused with the projects of naturalization of philosophy, in particular one of many projects of scientific or naturalized metaphysics known as ontic structural real-ism. (shrink)

I want to make sense of the view that singular causation involves a metaphysical necessary connection. By this I understand, where A and B are particulars, that ifA causes B then in every possible world in which A (or an A-indiscernible) or B (or a B-indiscernible) occurs, A (or an Aindiscernible) and B (or a B-indiscernible) occur. In the singularist approach that I will favour causal facts do not supervene on laws, causal relata are best understood as tropes, causation is (...) founded on the nature of its terms, and the necessity thus involved does not entail essentialism, determinism, and other usual problems. (shrink)

We examine the idea that there is a sub-discipline in philosophy of science, phi-losophy in science, whose researchers use philosophical tools to advance solu-tions to scientific problems. Rather, we propose that these tools are standard epistemic, cognitive, or intellectual tools at work in all rational activity, and therefore these researchers engage in scientific or metascientific research.

This paper delves into the character concept as applied to reproduction. Our argument is that the prevailing functional-adaptationist perspective falls short in explaining the evolution of reproductive traits, and we propose an alternative organismal-relational approach that incorporates the developmental and interactive aspects of reproduction. To begin, we define the functional individuation of reproductive traits as evolutionary strategies aimed at enhancing fitness, and we demonstrate how this perspective influences the classification of reproductive characters and modes, the comprehension of shared traits as (...) resulting from conflicts of evolutionary interest between individuals, and the explanation of reproductive diversity. After outlining the shortcomings of this framework, we introduce an organismal-relational approach grounded in evolutionary developmental studies of reproduction. This view provides a revised classification for reproductive characters and modes and offers a new understanding of interorganismal traits that takes into account their inherently relational nature. Lastly, we present the research agenda that emerges from this approach, which addresses the core explanatory gaps left by the adaptationist perspective, including the explanation of reproductive homologies and homoplasies, the developmental constraints associated with the evolution of reproductive modes, and the evolvability of reproductive characters. (shrink)

El presente texto de Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) apareció por primera vez en una traducción al italiano de Guido Neri bajo el título “II nome Berlino” [El nombre Berlín], publicado en 1964 en la revista literaria dirigida por Elio Vittorini e Italo Calvino Il menabó 7, año 6, pp. 121-25. El texto original en francés se extravió y, con la autorización del propio Blanchot, Hélène Jelen y Jean-Luc Nancy tradujeron la versión italiana al francés para publicarla en 1983 como “Le (...) Nom de Berlin” en una edición bilingüe. Desde entonces, la versión francesa ha sido reimpresa múltiples veces: en Cafe 3 (1983), 43-6; Berlin, collection Libération, 4 (1989); y Po&sie 52 (1990), 6-8. El texto fue finalmente republicado con su nombre original en francés, es decir, “Berlin” para la publicación de la traducción cuatrilingüe francés, inglés, ruso y alemán) aparecida en 1994 en MLN, Vol. 109, No. 3, German Issue (Apr.), The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 345-355. Se ha decidido traducir este texto también en lengua hispana por su innegable actualidad y peculiar claridad. En él no se trata exclusivamente sobre la realidad política, económica y lingüística de Berlín (o de Alemania) durante la Guerra Fría. Las reflexiones de Blanchot permanecen tan vigentes como el fenómeno que aquí decide enfrentar en sus múltiples aspectos: los fundamentos mismos de la política y el Estado en la modernidad. Para esta primera traducción al castellano del texto se ha tomado como referencia la versión de Jelen y Nancy antes mencionada. (shrink)

Every idealist believes himself to have rational grounds for the faith that somewhere, and in some world, and at some time, the ideal will triumph, so that a survey, a divine synopsis of all time, somehow reveals the lesson of all sorrow, the meaning of all tragedy, the triumph of the spirit. But it is not ours to say, in the world in which we at present have to live from one day to another, and to follow the fortunes of (...) man from one newspaper to another,--when and how the true revelation of the world's meaning is faced and[ found. The Basic Writings of Josiah Royce, Vol. II, p. 1146.]. (shrink)

Dans le présent article, Maurice et Orensanz dialogueront sur quelques thèmes clés de l’œuvre de Bunge. L’objectif de ce dialogue est de faire avancer le programme métascientifique. Les principaux points abordés peuvent être présentés sous la forme d’une série de questions : est-il possible de prouver que le monde extérieur existe ? Qu’est-ce que la matière ? La relation partie à tout est-elle transi-tive ? Quelle est la différence entre les systèmes et les assortiments ? Les objets fictifs ont-ils (...) une fonction dans l’ontologie ? Bien qu’il s’agisse des sujets princi-paux, plusieurs autres points seront abordés tout au long de cet échange. (shrink)

Drawing on Husserl, Ingarden and Levinas’ works, this article explores Ibsen’s Rosmersholm from a phenomenological perspective, aiming to shed light both on this play and on the phenomenology of hunger and theatre, as well as on the larger meaning of alimentary enjoyment.

There is a relationship between touch and language at the heart of which lies the philosophical problem of the secret. As Derrida points out, since Aristotle touch has been qualified as ἄδηλον: secret, nocturnal, barely apparent. After some brief etymological remarks, in this article, I explore the mystery that touch represents for language through Levinas’ concept of the secret, thematizing two levels: first, that of the contemporary critique of ocularcentrism, then the level of the tactile experiences that can hardly be (...) put into words. (shrink)

Critical notice of Richard Gaskin's "The Unity of the Proposition" (OUP 2008).

As touch remains commonly defined by the closeness it physically implies and it rhetorically evokes, the mere notion of distant touch and of distal haptic perception seems peculiar. But Aristotle’s perspective, which I wish to take as a point of departure, is firm: we perceive the objects of touch, the hot and the cold, the hard and the soft, the curved and the sharp, through other things: δι' ἑτέρων. In this article, I would like to explore this ἕτερος by showing (...) how the otherness of perception always implies an intermediary, a middle point (μέσος), i.e. an other not so other, an other that is able to translate the much more distant otherness of the perceived object. To explore these forgotten layers of alterity that fall into what we commonly conceive of as the impalpable emptiness of distance, I propose to study the idea of distant touch from the perspective of phenomenological aesthetics. In order to do so, I will first examine some aspects of the Husserlian account of perception and will then focus on the phenomenology of distant touch in Alejandra Costamagna’s novel El Sistema del Tacto [The System of Touch] (2018). (shrink)

In this article, I explore the role of the body in Indian thought through the lens of Lilian Silburn’s works, focusing on the idea of carving the cosmos, namely of somatic performances that have cosmological relevance. First, I delve into her biography, to study, subsequently, her analysis of ancient Vedic philosophy, the Brāhmaṇa, the Upanişad, and Buddhism. In this manner, I touch upon a series of conceptual developments, trying to understand the constant tensions between the discontinuous and the continuous, the (...) non-arranged and the arranged, the multiple and the One, and finally between eternalism and nihilism. I conclude by examining the way Buddhism has of resolving these tensions in the non-substantial theory of Karman. (shrink)

En este artículo analizamos la contribución de la teología protestante a la idea de autonomía moral a partir de un análisis de la obra de Juan Calvino. Mostramos cómo se afirma en ella la incapacidad del sujeto para conocer y querer el bien, manifiesto en la ley natural. Esta incapacidad es compensada con los mandatos bíblicos, para los que Calvino justificará una positivación jurídica en los Estados cristianos. Concluimos, por todo ello, que Calvino está lejos de la idea kantiana de (...) autonomía que consideramos distintiva de la Modernidad. (shrink)

En la obra dramática A puerta cerrada (1944), el filósofo y literato Jean-Paul Sartre plantea la relación interpersonal como plena de conflicto e imposibilidad para llevar a cabalidad los ideales dialógicos. Las conclusiones a las que llega Sartre serán confrontadas con la propuesta del filósofo judío Emmanuel Levinas, con el fin de vislumbrar sus tesis en torno a la alteridad, mostrando cómo, en vez de acuerdos racionales que superen lo diverso y lo engloben en la totalidad, habrá que recibir al (...) Otro y responderle en la trascendencia que exige su infinitud. The Philosopher and Writer Jean-Paul Sartre, in the dramatic work No Exit (1944), claims the inter-subjective relationship is full of conflict and that it is impossible to reach the dialogical ideal. We will confront Sartre´s conclusions from the proposal of the jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas in order to see his thesis about otherness. We will explain how, instead of some rational agreements that overcome the diversity inside totality, it is necessary to receive the other and respond to him in the transcendence that Infinity requires. (shrink)

Resumen: Este trabajo se propone revisar la tesis de la proliferación de alternativas, expuesta por Boaventura de Sousa Santos, a la luz de algunas críticas a la tesis de la proliferación de teorías, expuesta por Paul Feyerabend. Se defiende que, aunque no de modo explícito, hay una afinidad entre ambas tesis y, en consecuencia, las debilidades de la segunda afectan a la primera. No obstante, el objetivo básico consiste en mostrar cómo propuestas emergentes, como la ecología de los saberes, antes (...) que insistir en su carácter contraepistemológico, podrían beneficiarse de una discusión epistemológica amplia.: In this paper I review the thesis about the proliferation of alternatives by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, from some criticisms to the thesis of the proliferation of theories by Paul Feyerabend. I claim that, though not in explicit way, there is an affinity between them, therefore the weakness from the second one affects the first one. However, the point is to show how some emergent proposals, as the ecology of knowledges, could benefit from a full epistemological discussion, instead of insisting on its counter-epistemological nature. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza los fundamentos doctrinales del derecho penal eclesiástico calviniano, asentado teóricamente en la teología del pecado original y cuyo ejercicio toma forma en la práctica del Consistorio ginebrino. Asimismo, explora las razones de la diferencia entre derecho penal eclesial y civil. Y es que, aunque en el calvinismo la Iglesia y el Estado son titulares de un ius gladii, sólo uno de estos sistemas penales puede reivindicar el ejercicio de la pena corporal, el otro tan sólo puede reclamar (...) un castigo espiritual: en esto haremos radicar la diferencia entre derecho y disciplina. El derecho de coacción propiamente dicho pertenece en exclusiva al Estado como tal y ni el individuo ni la Iglesia pueden reclamarlos para sí. Estamos ante una aportación fundamental de la Reforma a la historia del derecho. (shrink)

Human produce discourses on the world: mythologies, religions, mysticisms, philosophies, science. The majority of those discourses are transcendent in nature. Following a conceptual clarification based on the notions of reflection and general discourse, philosophy appears as a transcendent general discourse among others; hence the failure of the latter to account for the world and science; hence the need for a non-transcendent general discourse, a properly scientific general discourse, a metascience. In light of these redefined boundaries, it will be proposed to (...) base metascience on an interpretation of Mario Bunge’s work. This interpretation is based on a set of general postulates that Mario Bunge adheres to and taken for granted by scientists. It is proposed that supporting such a set of postulates without problematizing them in the manner of the philosophers, makes Bunge’s thinking no longer philosophical. (shrink)

As the subtitle “A Syncretistic Account of Fictional Entities” makes clear, Alberto Voltolini intends in this book to argue for a syncretic view of the ontology and the semantics of fiction. In the process, he offers sympathetic and clear presentations of the main contenders in the field, discussing first ontological matters (chapters 1–4) and then semantic questions (chapters 5–6), and concluding with an ‘ontological’ argument for the allegedly syncretic brand of realism about fictional entities he has by then endorsed. The (...) book will therefore be very useful for all those who want to have a guided overview of the state of the art in the field, and very helpful if used as a main text for an introductory graduate course. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper delves into the inadequacy of attempting to reduce community-based benefits solely to individual goods, highlighting the intricate dynamics shaping the well-being of both individuals and the collective. Grounded in Aristotelian distinctions, the argument challenges Hartney's stance by emphasizing the intrinsic value of corrective justice within communities. It explores the interplay between distributive and corrective justice, asserting that the enforcement of corrective measures, essential for societal harmony, transcends individual benefits. The discussion extends to the multifaceted nature of community-based (...) benefits, encompassing shared values, common goods, social cohesion, and collective efforts. Overlooking these complexities oversimplifies the rich tapestry of societal interactions, diminishing the inherent value of communities in promoting the well-being of their members. The abstract advocates for a holistic understanding that appreciates the interconnected and collective nature of these benefits for a comprehensive comprehension of societal flourishing. (shrink)

Metascientific ontology differs from philosophical ontologies in its objectives, objects and methods. By an examination of the ontological theories of Mario Bunge, we will show their main objective is a unified representation of the world as known through the sciences, that their objects of study are scientific concepts, and that their methods do not differ from those that one expects to find in any rational activity. Metascientific ontology is therefore not transcendent because it does not seek to represent non-concrete objects (...) alien to the world we inhabit and to the sciences that study it, and therefore does not need special faculties and methods to carry out its research. Metascientific ontology is a general scientific discourse on the world because it was designed by and for the sciences. (shrink)

In abstract argumentation, each argument is regarded as atomic. There is no internal structure to an argument. Also, there is no specification of what is an argument or an attack. They are assumed to be given. This abstract perspective provides many advantages for studying the nature of argumentation, but it does not cover all our needs for understanding argumentation or for building tools for supporting or undertaking argumentation. If we want a more detailed formalization of arguments than is available with (...) abstract argumentation, we can turn to structured argumentation, which is the topic of this special issue of Argument and Computation. In structured argumentation, we assume a formal language for representing knowledge and specifying how arguments and counterarguments can be constructed from that knowledge. An argument is then said to be structured in the sense that normally, the premises and claim of the argument are made explicit, and the relationship between the premises and claim is formally defined (for instance, using logical entailment). In this introduction, we provide a brief overview of the approaches covered in this special issue on structured argumentation. (shrink)

L’ontologie métascientifique se distingue des ontologies philosophiques par ses objectifs, ses objets et ses méthodes. Par un examen des théories ontologiques de Mario Bunge, nous montrerons que leur principal objectif est l’élaboration d’une représentation unifiée du monde tel que connu via les sciences, que leurs objets d’étude sont les concepts scientifiques, et que leurs méthodes ne diffèrent pas de celles qu’on s’attend à trouver dans toute activité rationnelle. L’ontologie métascientifique n’est donc pas transcendante parce qu’elle ne cherche pas à représenter (...) des objets étrangers au monde que nous habitons et aux sciences qui l’étudient, et par conséquent elle n’a pas besoin de facultés ni de méthodes spéciales pour mener à bien ses recherches. L’ontologie métascientifique est un discours général scientifique sur le monde parce que conçue par et pour les sciences. (shrink)

The work of Emmanuel Levinas has been both abundantly recognized and criticized in moral philosophy. This Janus-faced attitude is also present in ecological theories, which find fertile ground in Levinas’ thought without being able to explain its apparent anthropocentrism. Opposing hermeneutical paths tend to focus either on otherness as an absolute alterity, implying a potentially unlimited responsibility for all alterities, or on otherness as a re-foundation of humanism, leading to the conclusion that responsibility is unlimited only among humans. Here I (...) seek to disentangle Levinas from these two extreme interpretations, first by reviewing ecological readings of his philosophy, in both the Francophone and Anglophone spheres, and second by analyzing specific Levinasian terms that might be particularly helpful for a non-anthropocentric or deep ecology. The main results of this investigation are a distinction between the ethics of responsibility and the ethics of vulnerability, an explanation of Levinasian compulsory or methodological humanism, and a schematic model of sensibility as enjoyment/vulnerability capable of supporting deep ecology without the traditional notions of free will, rights, or values. (shrink)

In this paper, I elicit a number of ways in which, according to the Sartre of The Transcendence of the Ego, we can miss the truth about our own self or, more simply, about ourselves. In order to do that, I consider what I call “statements about one's own self,” that is, statements of the form “I ...” where the predicate of the statement is meant to express things that are true of what is evidently given in reflection. I argue (...) that, although statements about one's own self can, according to Sartre, be true on final philosophical analysis, there are at least three senses in which statements about one's own self can or do miss the truth, even when they are (by hypothesis) true. How they miss the truth depends on the different level of philosophical analysis at which we take Sartre to be working. (shrink)

As the range of potential uses for Artificial Intelligence, in particular machine learning, has increased, so has awareness of the associated ethical issues. This increased awareness has led to the realisation that existing legislation and regulation provides insufficient protection to individuals, groups, society, and the environment from AI harms. In response to this realisation, there has been a proliferation of principle-based ethics codes, guidelines and frameworks. However, it has become increasingly clear that a significant gap exists between the theory of (...) AI ethics principles and the practical design of AI systems. In previous work, we analysed whether it is possible to close this gap between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of AI ethics through the use of tools and methods designed to help AI developers, engineers, and designers translate principles into practice. We concluded that this method of closure is currently ineffective as almost all existing translational tools and methods are either too flexible or too strict. This raised the question: if, even with technical guidance, AI ethics is challenging to embed in the process of algorithmic design, is the entire pro-ethical design endeavour rendered futile? And, if no, then how can AI ethics be made useful for AI practitioners? This is the question we seek to address here by exploring why principles and technical translational tools are still needed even if they are limited, and how these limitations can be potentially overcome by providing theoretical grounding of a concept that has been termed ‘Ethics as a Service.’. (shrink)

L’humain produit des discours sur le monde : mythologies, religions, mysticismes, philosophies, science. La majorité de ses discours sont de nature transcendante. À la suite d’un clarification conceptuelle fondée sur les notions de réflexion et de discours général, la philosophie apparaît comme un dis- cours général transcendant parmi d’autres ; d’où l’échec de celle-ci à rendre compte du monde et de la science ; d’où la nécessité de disposer d’un discours général non transcendant, un discours général proprement scientifique, une métascience. (...) À la lumière des frontières ainsi redéfinies, il sera proposé de fonder la métascience sur une interprétation de l’oeuvre de Mario Bunge. Cette interprétation se fonde sur un ensemble de postulats généraux aux- quels Mario Bunge adhère et tenus pour acquis par les scientifiques. Il est proposé que soutenir un tel ensemble de postulats sans les problématiser à la manière des philosophes, fait en sorte que la pensée de Bunge ne relève plus de la philosophie. (shrink)

In a 1995 interview, contemporary American composer John Zorn stated: ‘I got involved in music because of fi lm […] There’s a lot of fi lm elements in my music’ (Duckworth, 1995, p. 451). Scholars and critics have since widely noted these cinematic elements, with emphasis being placed on Zorn’s genre of so-called ‘fi le card compositions’. Whilst these studies have primarily concentrated on how the arrangement of sound blocks – the disjointed segments of Zorn’s compositions – can be compared (...) to cinematic montage, this article instead focusses on how sound blocks suggest the visual aspects of cinema. To delve deeper into the visuo-cinematic qualities of Zorn’s fi le card compositions, an idealised cinematic listener will be constructed, aided by various psychological, semiotic, philosophical and fi lm theories. I will suggest that a listener occupying a hypnogogic state projects moving images, akin to those of cinema, onto what Bernard Lewin fi rst called a ‘dream screen’. These projections occur due to intertextual associations made between fi le card compositions and the artistic fi gures to whom they are dedicated. These images combine with the sounds that brought them into being to form an audio-visual diegesis, which can be considered a type of half-imagined fi lm. The cinematic listener then actively draws out of this diegesis a narrative, via the semi-conscious process Boris Eikhenbaum called ‘inner speech’. I will conclude by giving some broader justifi cation for the methodology that brought this cinematic listener into being and suggest how the cinematic listener may be further utilised to provide musical analyses for fi le card works. (shrink)

Debates about the links between science and ontology are very active in contemporary philosophy, and, in fact, they have always been present. Despite the various philosophical positions on the subject, they all admit the existence of a metaphysical reality. In contrast, metascience holds that such a reality does not exist. This second issue of Mɛtascience presents seven out of twelve articles that have as a common thread either the metascientific ontology or the Bungean ontology.

This volume discusses the ideas of six leading thinkers of the French Enlightenment: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Holbach, and Condorcet. A general introduction surveys the political theories of the Enlightenment, setting them in the context of the political realities of 18th-century France. The first book of its kind on the subject, Philosophers and Pamphleteers brings a welcome, new perspective to the study of French political thought during a fascinating historical era.

Nous expliquerons pourquoi le Treatise on Basic Philosophy est une œuvre mé-tascientifique et non pas philosophique. On soutiendra ensuite que cette métas-cience s’inscrit dans un long processus de naturalisation de la pensée qui débute à la fin du Moyen Âge pour donner naissance à la pensée scientifique de l’étude du monde. La naturalisation prend la forme chez Bunge d’une naturalisation de la pensée générale qui permet de remplacer le discours général philosophique par le discours général scientifique. Finalement, cette naturalisation du (...) discours général ne doit pas être confondue avec les projets de naturalisation de la philo-sophie, notamment un des projets de la métaphysique scientifique ou naturali-sée connu sous le nom de réalisme structurel ontique. (shrink)

What follows is a dialogue between Maurice and Orensanz, in which they will discuss some key topics stemming from Bunge’s oeuvre. The objective of this dialogue is to advance the metascientific program even further. The main points that will be discussed can be presented as a series of questions: Is it possible to prove that the external world exists? What is matter? Is the part-whole relation transitive? What is the difference between systems and assortments? Do fictional objects have a (...) function in ontology? Although those are the main topics, several other points will be discussed throughout this exchange. (shrink)